It Never Changes
by Pylea Princess
Summary: Redone:). Cordelia tries to show Angel there is somthing to hope for. Tries...


8/23/04

I own nothing!

This story is for all reviewers! You rock! Specially Esperanza Fuega for help on grammar, and Silvi-hc, for all the great C/A!

Post Cordelia's death; pretend "a Hole in the World" didn't happen yet.

Angel sat at his desk in the Wolfram & hart Building. Nothing seemed to go right. Cordelia had died, just two weeks ago. He recalled her funeral. Everyone was so devastated. The Sunnydale gang was not invited, they just wouldn't appreciate it. He sighed.

Cordelia. The only woman he seemed to have actual chemistry with. The only he actually was friends with…

When he was alive, his life was full of drunken one-night stands. With Darla, he wasn't given a choice, he was hers. But to be fair, he hadn't given a chance to Drucilla either.

And the age old question. Buffy. What he had with Buffy, who knew? They always fought, or loved. The extremes, life and death. She was his light, he was her night. Or so he had once thought….

That night he had seen Buffy with the immortal, it hurt. To hell with cookie dough. Or maybe that's what she really was, cookie dough. It tastes so good, yet you know you'll get sick if you eat it.

He thought back to when he was happy, when things were easy. When there was only purity about.

Nothing came to mind. All the good things that happened to him, where the side effect of pain. That, or some horrible act in which regretted. His life was filled with regret and pain.

Angel knew that things were never easy, but did they have to be so painful? Sure pain meant you were alive, that you could feel. But what was the point if that's all you felt?

He couldn't be happy, yet the world wanted him to smile. Sure, to an outsider, his life seemed the laugh of luxury. But no amount of material things could mend a broken soul. All he wanted was the woman he loved, his son, and his friends, was that too much to ask?

Of coarse it was. His life resembled a martini. Sure, it looked good, and you could change it's color, and make it look nice, but it was always full of salt. You might twist the flavor, but the salt was always there, it wouldn't be a martini without it.

He rose from his desk, going over to the elevator. Taking it to the roof. He looked down at the streets below. How unaware the people below were, of the things that they truly thought as only nightmares, existed. Nothing could change that.

He walked over to the edge. Looking down at the lumberyard below. What would be the point, right? He already thought himself there, why not take the last step, and let it all fall he set his foot to the ledge…

"You know, if you do that, you'll probably just end up covered in splinters," Angel didn't look to that voice, he knew that voice.

"Yeah," he said, still having one foot at the top.

"I hope you know that I can't just come out, every time you think of taking the big plunge," Cordelia said.

"Maybe I don't want you to stop me," he said, his eyes seeing the ground below.

"Angel," she said.

"Don't, I need to do this," Angel said, a sick sense of determination in his voice.

He could see Cordelia roll her eyes in his mind's eye.

"Oh yeah? And why's that?" she demanded.

"I'm not helping anyone being here, I even put some people in danger," he said.

"What people?" she asked, walking over to him. That got him to face her.

"Shall I make a list? Doyle, Connor, you!" he held you his fingers as he named them off.

"Angel, it wasn't in your destiny to save us," she put her hand on his shoulder.

"Well, it wasn't in my destiny to kill you, either," he said, looking away. She grabbed his face in her hands.

"Now you look at me! You do this, you jump, and you know what will happen! Do you!" she screamed.

"I'll die," he said, his eyes filling with tears.

"But it won't be all clouds and harps where you'll end up! Angel, listen to me! You're not supposed to die, not here, not yet!" she said, as he pushed her away.

"So? Maybe I want to!" he yelled.

"Angel! If you kill yourself, now, then I'll never be able to see you, EVER!" she said.

"So! You'd be better off without me! I had you killed, without me, you would be alive!" Angel said.

"NO I wouldn't! Remember Russell Winters? You saved me from him!"

"Only for you too be killed four years later?" Angel said, icily. "I can't take it anymore! Everyone I ever cared about is dead! Sure, I'm immortal, I should expect that. People, they die of old age, of illness, of cancer, but no! I killed them! Me! Not some disease! I did!" he said, voice cracking.

"No you didn't! Angel, please! I love you!" she shouted, pleaded?

"And that's why you're dead! Cordelia, don't be like Buffy, let me just do this! I can't take any more blood on my hands," He said, quietly.

"If you kill yourself, it'll be your own blood!" she tried to take his hand.

"No! Then I'd be murdering a murder, it's better that way," he said.

"Angel, please, they'll need you, don't die! Stay alive, for me?" she begged. They locked stars, and she finally got threw. His bravado slipped away, making him look lost.

"Fine." he said. Thinking maybe there was some hope in this world.

Then next day, Angel was at his desk, when an urgent phone call reached his desk. "Angel, it's Fred, she's, she's very ill…."

The End…


End file.
